WELL, I'M BACK HUMANS

Girl. Hey. It's been more than a year, so that's cool. BUT, if you're new here, this is all brand-new. I never had a past life, time does not exist. I'm new here too.

Anyway friends, I'm so glad to be back. Since launching JIG+SAW back in 2015 (baby iteration), I had no idea what I was doing, just knew I wanted to connect with women, help them build something they love and find safety and security in one another. It's November 2017, and nothing has changed. I yearn for that on the daily — hoping all women can come with all their "things" that hold them back from success and find comfort with JIG+SAW as their support system. But let me tell you, that is some hard shit to convince people of. Thus, it's been a rough, uneven road.

There have been over 15,000 times I reconsidered what I was doing or why JIG+SAW or who was I really serving. But at the end of the day, I know why and for who — I just simply get scared of the unknown. SO. I thought I'd share four helpful little tips to keep you movin', keep you focused.

1. Questioning what you're doing?

Take a beat.

Sometimes, when our heads are down, we never come up to the surface to see what we've created. Try and take a moment to recognize your work, your effort, your commitment, even in the smallest of recognization like writing your About Me or editing 20 more photos of your products. I remember when JIG+SAW first opened its doors of our pop-up, I felt like I'd done nothing and it was going to be a complete bust. We had a celebration and invited our entire community + friends of friends and luckily I had great colleagues to remind me to get out of my head... I looked up and saw over 100 people, most who came alone connecting with women they wouldn't have otherwise met if it weren't for JIG+SAW. Now that is some cool recognization. It was a small but mighty moment for me, to take a step back and see what was created in this place.

2. Feeling overwhelmed and want to quit?

Write it out.

Most of the time, we pile unnecessary things onto our plate because we need to feel validity as a business person, need to feel like we matter, like we're important in this space. And in most cases, all this creates is overwhelm and stress. When you're feeling like you can't take it like you're confused and don't think you can make another move forward, grab a blank sheet of paper or notebook and brain dump everything you're thinking. After a few times of brain dumping, you might find a pattern. When I started this practice, I noticed the overwhelm came from taking on more projects that I needed to. I connected my validity in the space to how much was on my to-do list. Finally coming to that realization, my to-do list always consists of no more than three main tasks for the day. No more — this serves me well because three tasks is a no biggie and I have the rest of the day, hypothetically, to enjoy it.

3. needing help?

find out why.

I remember when I was legit ready to pull my hair out and call it quits and somehow decided to onboard five people onto the team. Girl. why. I onboarded people that I thought I needed because I was insecure about everything I had taken on and felt like I needed more hands on deck. what was created was, even more, overwhelming, even more stress, even more work left undone. I had to ask myself why I needed help and it was simply because I wanted to feel secure that this company was in existence and we were all working towards the same goal. And what was created was me as a sh*t boss because I couldn't check in with everyone because I was busy, at the time, building the pitch deck, and thus, it was a disaster. SO, my guidance would simply be to question why you need the help. ask yourself if you just want the support for body's sake or you really need someone to execute on the social media strategy and it's something you can't do. Be clear on your help because you'll need to be their support and help in addition to your own work.

4. in the midst of your project and feel inspired to start another?

confusion has taken over and it's time to step away.

I'm the ultimate culprit of this — Recently, I started three different sub-companies under my company. Why? Because I was inherently solving external problems with internal problems. I wasn't really looking at what the core issue was with my company and what I thought I was doing was supporting the community by solving their (external) issues. Thus, confusion hit me hard like a rock. It's when we allow external forces to create action in our progress, that we lose the course which leaves us with our head in our hands, straight up confused. The best resolution is to step away from what you've been hustling toward to remove the external and focus on YOUR internal. It can be really hard to focus when more than your own voice is guiding you. Step away and listen to yourself.